Month: Feb 2016

The grown-ups are still arguing about who loves America more – the one from Southern Europe versus the one who lives in Southern Europe. On balance I’m supporting Team Hoyt on the grounds of them not being racial-supermacists but eek, Team Vox just argues better.

Vox continues to confuse ethnicity with race. Hoyt continues to confuse culture with ideology. So from Vox we have the appalling idea that if you have the wrong genes you aren’t a proper American and from Hoyt we have the appalling idea that if you don’t follow her ideology you aren’t a proper American. Wrong-blood versus wrong-think – both awful in their own special way.

I said ‘Team Vox’ but it is just Vox. The comment section at Vox Popoli doesn’t argue as well as their boss. At Hoyt’s the atmosphere is more egalitarian – a similar quality of argument from the regulars as the host. Vox keeps throwing out rhetorical punches – basically the ropes in this analogy are scary left-sounding arguments that Sarah Hoyt doesn’t want to make (e.g. maybe some things are performative rather than innate) on one side of the ring and the other the inherent contradictions of her position.

My, these transamericans are certainly entitled, aren’t they? Not only can they tell Americans what Real Americans are and are not, but they are going to kick out everyone who doesn’t think like they do, no matter whose posterity they happen might be! Nations aren’t genetically-related peoples, after all, but mere collections of similarly-minded groupthinkers. – Vox Day

So a nasty little double-edged dig at transgender people from Vox in a lead into a paragraph that paints (sort of correctly) that Hoyt’s position implies a kind of thought police or a ‘window into men’s souls’ to define citizenship.

I’ll leave the last word* to J Carlton who is a regular at According to Hoyt and who reblogged this at his own place in an attempt to do a mike-drop.

Here’s the thing, Vox, YOU don’t get a say in who’s an American, not anymore. You’ve given that up for a villa in Italy. I imagine that you enjoy it, that means that you no longer have to deal with America’s problems. All your problem are the problems of Europe and you are welcome to them. As for REAL Americans, I would rather have some of the people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing over the years than somebody who is as childish and cowardly as you, Vox. You ran from America’s problems and then had the unmitigated GALL to say that Sarah isn’t good enough to be an American.

Yeah, but on the internet you can never do a mike-drop. Come on Team Hoyt! That isn’t going to work! Vox has been shouted out by professionals!

*[OK, I didn’t leave the last word. That was my attempt to show how the brilliant emotional fueled telling off doesn’t close a discussion. OK, some tips. Go for the apparent STRENGTH of your opponent which is actually a hidden WEAKNESS. In Vox’s case it is THEOLOGY. The hidden weakness is FREE WILL. He is philosophically committed to it but his position tends towards DETERMINISM.]

The other week I posted some comments at Mad Genius about this post http://madgeniusclub.com/2016/02/15/on-teachers-kids-and-hugos/ – unfortunately most of the responses were not exactly shining examples of how to have a rational discussion. However, one chap did decide to engage on a level above name-calling, which was nice.

More adventures in 3D. I haven’t done much more in Blender because I can make stuff much quicker in Cheetah 3D despite its limitations. Blender has everything but by having everything, the used interface is bewildering. One thing I wanted to use Blender for though was ‘sculpting’. Sculpting is the process by which you pull, twist, smooth, squish 3D objects into the shapes you want. In Cheetah I usually build objects up from smaller bits and just edit the odd polygon. This works fine for spaceships, buildings and robots but is not a great way of making heads. For people I semi-cheat and import models from Poser.

So I’m now trying Sculptris. Sculptris is free because the company that makes it want you to buy their bigger 3D app Z-Brush. However, for my purposes Sculptris looks like a handy tool for making things to import into Cheetah.

The idea is that you take a sphere and then pinch, pull, squish, smooth etc as if it was a blob of clay. I made a big ugly head (I can only do ugly)! I can then export that as .obj file and import it into Cheetah for more fun and rendering. e.g. now big pink ugly head with lighting!

In a previous post I looked at how the US Republican Party nomination process was playing out in Sad Land and Rabidonia. This is a short update.

The main thing to note is that, as far as I can tell, most notable Puppies aren’t saying a great deal about it. Which is wise and maybe some are quiet Bernie Sanders supporters (OK probably not). However the vocal ones are very vocal.

The two major voices are:

Vox Day – supporting Donald Trump

Sarah Hoyt – supporting Ted Cruz

This discussion is getting a tad heated with each poster refering to the other’s position. Sarah Hoyt avoids naming Vox, I think to avoid summoning anti-Vox trolls. Vox is lambasting Sarah and is throwing some nasty digs her way:

Now, she is right about one thing. I will not be Portuguese or Italian or German no matter how long I live in Europe. Here, you can move from a neighboring village that is a 10-minute walk away and you will always be stranieri to the locals. But what Sarah fails to understand is that she is no more American than I am Portuguese. She is a US resident, perhaps even a US citizen, but she is not an American. America is not an idea. America is not a concept. America is not a proposition nation. One cannot, contra her past assertions, become a genuine American just because one happens to believe one thinks a certain way.

Vox’s minions are nastier in the comments although the man himself claims that relations are not strained between the two of them.

It does meander a bit and some of the more overt anti-Trump/VD parts are in the comments.

Oh, because Trump isn’t? Have you actually looked at Trump’s history? He talks game. He’s not any better.
Look, he is “European Right Wing” which is why VD likes him. Americans following VD MUST understand he’s not an American conservative. He’s an European right winger. They’re not the same. And here in the states, they’re both socialists. The only difference is leftists in Europe are INTERNATIONAL socialists, and right wing is NATIONAL socialist. That’s all.
You want national socialism here? Yeah. Trump is your man. He’s into the banks for millions and he’s corrupted everything he touched. But you guys believe he’s a white Knight sans peur et sans reproche. Good LORD.

As always Vox writes better, argues more effectively and for a position that is more absurd and dangerous. Sarah Hoyt gets at the core aspect that infuriates people opposed to Trump: the guy is an obvious fraud.

Meanwhile the previously Pro-Carson, John C Wright has declared his prefered choice…and it is BERNIE SANDERS!OMG! Ha, no only kidding, its Donald Trump.

To be fair to Mr Wright he doesn’t seem too happy about it. Naturally, given the right’s deep and implacable commitment to free-speech in all its forms Wright identifies the key political issue of the day:

That is not what I believe. I say the main enemy is the Press. Destroy the Press, and the federal government can be driven back into its proper constitutional limitations. With the Press at large acting as the False Prophet for the Beast, it cannot be driven back, because the people are deceived into thinking the Beast will not consume their lives.

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Yup, that’s how the JCW’s will restore ‘freedom’ – they’ll first destroy the press. I’m guessing they’ll then protect freedom by taking away those other terrible threats like voting, differences of opinion, women having lives beyond what JCW thinks they should have, stuff like that…